Back in October, WorldNetDaily (WND) published and promoted a new book and DVD claiming that a deceased Kabbalist in Israel named Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri had seen Jesus in a vision and prophesied that he would return following the death of Ariel Sharon. The author, a Baptist pastor named Carl Gallups (also known as “PPSIMMONS”), now has further thoughts:

Kaduri ‘prophesied’ that Jesus would NOT come until Sharon died. Today, Ariel Sharon has died. Kaduri did NOT say the Messiah would come immediately but rather that the Messiah would NOT return before the death of Sharon. This Kaduri prophecy has come true. Did God use the flawed Rabbi? With this prophecy and the revealed NAME of the Messiah it does make one wonder, doesn’t it?

In fact, Kaduri prophesied in 2005 that Ariel Sharon would be the last Prime Minister of Israel, and that the Messiah had “attached his soul” to someone in Israel. Kaduri also supposedly left a note identifying the name of this person as “Yehoshua” or “Yeshua”, which is an ordinary Hebrew name but which in Anglicised form is “Jesus”. From this, Gallups and others constructed a theory that Kaduri was a secret believer in Jesus, and that he indeed had been given a prophecy.

This may all appear to be somewhat marginal, but US evangelical interest in Kaduri has been growing and Gallups’ account has spread rapidly on Twitter with the final decline and death of Sharon. The story has a couple of particular functions beyond a general credulous interest in supposed signs of the End Times: there’s a trend in US evangelicalism of appropriating aspects of Jewish religious identity, and staking a claim to the soul of a dead Kabbalist takes that to a new level. Secondly, alliances between Israel and Christian Zionists have sometimes faltered over whether Jews need be evangelized, and a story about Jesus appearing to a Rabbi is both a supernatural confirmation of Christianity and a sign that the conversion of the Jews can be left to divine intervention.

Gallups originally came prominence after he created a video in which he argued that the Bible names the Anti-Christ as “baraq o bamah”. He’s currently moved on from Sharon’s death to discussing how Obama murdered Loretta Fuddy, presumably as a ploy to distract interest away from his birth certificate. Gallups has a particular enthusiasm for the Birtherism of a certain Mike Zullo, who apparently serves as “lead investigator” for Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

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Note on Attacks

Anyone who comments on current affairs on-line risks being smeared by attack sites and/or abusive Tweets. This is particularly so if one chooses to challenge dishonesty or other kinds of reprehensible behaviour.

As a result of making a stand in a few particular instances, I have become the focus of a number of such attacks. Those who have targeted me include: a Nigerian evangelist who believes in “child witches”; former activists with the EDL; a man with a long history of bad debt and grandiosity; a sockpuppeting tabloid journalist; and a self-serving “celebrity” MP who deploys smears to discourage scrutiny.

The bad faith of such sites and Tweets ought to be self-evident. However, any readers interested in the true background can read this and this.